This agreement is a defeat for Novato, even tho it receives a $300,000.00 shakedown from NCRA-NWP. There is a substantial block of anti-rail opinion in Marin County who will not see this deal as a win-win at all. Remember it is the losers who don't forget. Both NCRA-NWP and SMART are accumulating enemies as these projects remain vaporware for years.

Most of the opponents of NCRA-NWP and SMART have a reasonably clear idea, tho negative, of what to expect from these projects. The anti-rail crowd knows what freight trains are like; they are just grossly exaggerating the freights' impact because they don't like trains. SMART is another matter. The opposition knows full well what kind of occasional toy train operation SMART promises. Au contraire, most of the people who will vote for SMART don't have a clue as to what they're being sold. They think SMART is some kind of BART because it sounds cutely similar. Only railfans know what a doodlebug is. Wait until the public finds out that they are getting a diesel bus on rails.